History - Chapter Three
I felt it was about time I got around to posting this. As always, thank you to amarasaa for her betaing skills.
I can't remember whether I've disclaimed this or not, but if I haven't I am hereby disclaiming any right to the characters, situations etc. within this fic (although I'll be sad to see Alex and Dave go, short though their appearance was).
Previous chapters can be found here.
Behold the powers of crazy revelations and weird dreams ;) :
Warnings: Death/grief, graphic violence (upcoming)
It's that disease of the age,
It's that disease that we crave.
Alone at the end of the rave,
We catch the last bus home.
Corporate America wakes:
Coffee republic and cakes.
We open the latch on the gate
Of the hole that we call our home
“Mapacha!”
“Bless you.” Buffy said.
Dawn scowled at her. “No! It’s this word: mapacha, M-A-P-A-C-H-A. It keeps coming up and I have no idea what it means.” Dawn was looking frazzled, and stood between various piles of open books. Knowing better than to get in the way, Buffy was curled up in the blue sofa of their living room, trying to read a novel. Andrew was in the opposite corner, researching on a laptop. Buffy bet he was playing solitaire.
“Have you tried Google?” Buffy asked. “It’s pretty good.”
Dawn glared at her again. “Buffy. If it’s some sort of demon language, it’s not gonna be -”
“It means ‘twins’,” Andrew called from his seat, cutting Dawn off. “It’s Swahili. Got a singular of just pacha, spelt the same.” Dawn looked resentful for a moment, and then grinned:
“That makes so much sense! That’s why…. OK, Andy, start cross-referencing that with everything else. I think there must be two things we’re looking for, like ‘twin’ bracelets or something.” She hopped to another space on the floor, and knelt down to the books around her. She scanned a few words, and then looked to Buffy again. “Buffy, in your vision, or whatever, were you wearing anything else, besides the bracelet? Like some other jewellery or something?”
Buffy paused, before saying, “No.” And it was the truth. She hadn’t been. It made Dawn frown, though.
“Are you sure? Nothing like a companion to the bracelet or anything? There was nothing at all?” Buffy’s hand slipped as she turned a page, giving herself a paper cut. She looked at it, and the tiny drop of blood that formed.
“Well.” Maybe it was time to come clean. Not that she had anything to hide.
“What, Buffy?”
“There was.” She licked the blood off her finger, and pressed the cut, nervously. “There was, um, the amulet. Y’know, Spike’s.”
The laptop made a beeping noise. She looked over, but Andrew had his face hidden. She looked back to Dawn, whose eyes were wide with comprehension.
“Oh,” she said.
There was silence, and Dawn continued to look at her. There was something in her widened eyes, and Buffy couldn’t take it. Putting her book down, she left the room and headed to her own.
She squinted at the horizon, and the sun that reflected from the mountains. No matter how far she ran, they never appeared to be any closer. That didn’t matter though, since she had no idea what she would do if she reached them.
She made herself run faster, ignoring the searing pain in the soles of her feet. The rhythm she made sounded ominous to her ears.
Grains of dirt flew into her eye, and she slowed, blinking. As her eyes closed, the beating of her heart morphed to the sound of drums. The heat from the sun vanished, and the replacement sensation made her skin crawl. The smell of blood rose in her nostrils.
Loneliness began to bear down on her, and she forced her eyes open, concentrating on the warmth the sun gave her skin.
Choking back a sob, she ran on, too afraid to look back.
She was woken by Dawn, who sat on the edge of her bed. Scrubbing congealed make-up from her eyes, Buffy realised there was something in her sister’s hands:
“It’s a decaf-soy-mocha. Thought you might like it.” Buffy didn’t reply, but took the cup, marvelling at the Starbucks label.
As she sipped, she asked, “So, um, have you guys figured anything out?”
“A bit.” Dawn shrugged. “None of it makes much sense, but then its all been translated from tons of different languages, so it was never gonna agree completely.”
“Anything, y’know, more concrete than the rest?”
“Well, the bracelet, and the, um, amulet were forged by these two ‘twins’, apparently. I’m not sure if they’re, like, actual twins, but it’s something like that. Anyway, the ‘twins’ were orphans, or didn’t have a family, or something, and they forged the two pieces, basically doing a Sauron. Only, y’know, less with the hate and more with the power.”
“Huh?”
Dawn shook her head. “Sorry. They, like, put their essences into it and stuff. Made the two pieces bound to them and bound to each other: it was a whole power-essence-sharing thing.” Buffy was almost certain that that didn’t make any more sense.
“So, um, what does that mean for us, exactly?”
Dawn frowned, “I’m not sure. We’ve found pretty much everything we can from books and the Internet and stuff. Pretty much all that’s left is to, um,” she turned pink, “go to where it was found….”
“You want us to go to Africa?” Buffy was a little shocked. But then again, what else did she have to do? She didn’t have a job, and Dawn wasn’t in school. (Buffy always meant to get round to that….)
“Well, y’know, it’s a possibility.” Dawn seemed to be warming up to the idea. “It would be really cool, seeing the actual dig and stuff. And there’s always the added bonus of winter sun!” Buffy just looked at her, causing her smile to fade. “Anyway, before that, there’s some other stuff that we need to talk about, stuff that’s come up.” She suddenly looked very uncomfortable. “You’re gonna have to tell me about the, um, the amulet. There’s some stuff…. I need to know what, um, Angel told you, ‘cause there’s something…. It’s just….”
Dawn stopped then, looking at her. The look that had been on her face earlier was back. “Get some more sleep, and then we can go out for dinner or something.” She smiled weakly. “Gotta spend Giles’ money somehow, right?”
Buffy put the empty cup on the side-table. Dawn began to leave, and she called after her:
“Thanks, Dawn. Y’know, for the coffee and stuff.” Dawn smiled again, and left the room.
The plain stretched out in front of her. In the moonlight it was grey, at contrast to the night sky, and patches of white shone where the light hit sand. There were mountains in the distance, she knew, and they were her destination. She had plenty of time to reach them.
A scorpion scuttled by her feet, and she kicked it, watching its path in cruel fascination.
The first rays of dawn glinted off its shell.
As the sunlight touched her skin, she felt something. Involuntarily, she checked whether the scorpion was alive. It was, and she felt relieved.
Disgusted with herself, she searched for some shade. There was little to be found, but a tree offered some cover. She lay down to sleep.
Before her eyes closed, she marvelled at the beauty of the morning sky.
Buffy wondered what it was that Dawn had to tell her. First of all, she’d been plied with evil-corporation-coffee, and now she was eating in an Italian restaurant that had run out of anchovies, without Dawn complaining. It was quite a nice restaurant, actually, even if it was (from what Buffy could tell) just one step up from Pizza Hut. It had a relaxed atmosphere, which she was glad of, since she had been in no mood to dress up.
She was still tired though, and the food wasn’t helping. She had a feeling that she was going to fall asleep at the table, face landing in the remains of her cheesecake and arm knocking over the vase, spilling water everywhere. Even if she did, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t get any actual sleep. It would be stolen by another dream, who knew what about…?
A shriek from a party of pre-teens put her back on alert. Dawn and Andrew were looking serious, sitting together on the other side of the table. Scraping crumbs off her plate, she asked:
“So, um, what did you guys wanna know?” They looked at each other, and Dawn fiddled with her hands. It was Andrew who spoke.
“We were just wondering what Angel actually said to you, about the amulet, when he gave it to you.” She cast her mind back, trying to remember his brief appearance. She remembered kissing him, though not the reason why. And what had he said, exactly?
“He said that it had to be worn by a vampire with a soul. No, wait, other than human.” She kept her voice as neutral as she could. “And there was something about cleaning…cleansing. Other than that, not much. But there was a whole file of papers.”
Dawn shook her head, “The papers didn’t say anything about the amulet. No one knew anything about it, until you,” she closed her eyes briefly, “until you explained what happened.”
“But…he’d done research. There was translation and stuff.”
“None of it was in the file.” Dawn looked at her seriously. “Buffy. The amulet’s pretty well documented. There’s no actual pictures of it or anything, but it’s pretty clear what’s being talked about, when you get round a couple of things. It’s never mentioned on its own, though, it’s always mentioned with the gauntlet. And, Buffy, one thing that’s said is how you’re s’posed to use them.”
“And?” Buffy had a sinking feeling, and was pretty sure she’d lost all neutrality.
“The amulet, it was never meant to be used on its own. Pretty much all the books say that if it is, either it or the gauntlet, weird stuff happens. Stuff that was never meant to. The two things are a matched pair, and if you use them separately then all the power in them’s unbalanced. It.” Dawn swallowed. “It backfires on the user.”
For a moment, Buffy couldn’t speak.
“Angel couldn’t…he didn’t know.”
“If he did research,” Andrew said quietly, “then he knew.”
“No.” She shook her head. “He couldn’t have. He…he wanted to use it himself. He wouldn’t have wanted to use it if he knew.”
“But, you told him he wasn’t. Going to,” Dawn replied.
“But he didn’t know that I was gonna do that.”
“But he knows you. He would’ve known it ‘wasn’t his fight’.”
“But….”
“Buffy, anyone would’ve known.” Dawn was getting exasperated. “First of all, he hadn’t fought with you in about four years, and second, both of you are all sickening and ‘oh no, I can’t risk you’, which means you probably aren’t gonna fight with each other in a very long time.”
“But he couldn’t have known that there was someone else applicable. He couldn’t have known about…Spike until he got to Sunnydale.”
“He knew about the First, though.” Andrew wasn’t looking at her. “If he knew about that, he could have known about a lot of things.”
“No,” Buffy said, putting her fork down with a little more force than she intended. “I know you don’t like Angel, Dawn, and I know that you’ve told Andrew your opinion of him, but he wouldn’t do that. Even if he didn’t actually want to be in the fight, he wouldn’t…kill…Spike that way. He would do it himself.” She looked down at her hands, blinking her eyes into submission.
During the silence, a waitress appeared, clearing their plates and placing the check on the table. Buffy got out her ‘expenses’ credit card, while Dawn spoke again:
“Maybe. But he still left out a load of information. And he’s still working for Wolfram and Hart.”
“I’m not getting into this with you again, Dawn.” She tried to shoot a warning look at her sister, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. “Look, maybe there’s two amulets, and everything’s just a misunderstanding.” It was grasping at straws, but it made more sense.
“Where’s the other one, then?”
“I dunno…still in Africa, near where the bracelet -”
“Gauntlet.”
“Gauntlet was found.”
“Don’t you think they would’ve found it?”
“They might not have.”
“It’s still a bit unlikely…” Andrew started.
“OK!” She was getting angry again. “ We’ll go find it. And then you can stop going at Angel all the time!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
They hastily left the restaurant.
Walking home, Buffy headed out in front, ignoring Dawn and Andrew and their whispered conversation. She climbed the stairs to their flat quickly, and headed straight to bed, her fatigue having come back with full force.
She crouched amongst the brush, trying to keep her footing on the sandy soil. The sun was setting behind her.
The slightest rustle alerted her to their presence. They came closer, and there was nothing she could do but face them. Fluidly, she rose to her feet…
…and came face to face with herself.
Protect me from what I want.
Protect me.
Protect me.
-Placebo, Protect Me from What I Want
[Chapter 4]
I can't remember whether I've disclaimed this or not, but if I haven't I am hereby disclaiming any right to the characters, situations etc. within this fic (although I'll be sad to see Alex and Dave go, short though their appearance was).
Previous chapters can be found here.
Behold the powers of crazy revelations and weird dreams ;) :
Warnings: Death/grief, graphic violence (upcoming)
It's that disease of the age,
It's that disease that we crave.
Alone at the end of the rave,
We catch the last bus home.
Corporate America wakes:
Coffee republic and cakes.
We open the latch on the gate
Of the hole that we call our home
“Mapacha!”
“Bless you.” Buffy said.
Dawn scowled at her. “No! It’s this word: mapacha, M-A-P-A-C-H-A. It keeps coming up and I have no idea what it means.” Dawn was looking frazzled, and stood between various piles of open books. Knowing better than to get in the way, Buffy was curled up in the blue sofa of their living room, trying to read a novel. Andrew was in the opposite corner, researching on a laptop. Buffy bet he was playing solitaire.
“Have you tried Google?” Buffy asked. “It’s pretty good.”
Dawn glared at her again. “Buffy. If it’s some sort of demon language, it’s not gonna be -”
“It means ‘twins’,” Andrew called from his seat, cutting Dawn off. “It’s Swahili. Got a singular of just pacha, spelt the same.” Dawn looked resentful for a moment, and then grinned:
“That makes so much sense! That’s why…. OK, Andy, start cross-referencing that with everything else. I think there must be two things we’re looking for, like ‘twin’ bracelets or something.” She hopped to another space on the floor, and knelt down to the books around her. She scanned a few words, and then looked to Buffy again. “Buffy, in your vision, or whatever, were you wearing anything else, besides the bracelet? Like some other jewellery or something?”
Buffy paused, before saying, “No.” And it was the truth. She hadn’t been. It made Dawn frown, though.
“Are you sure? Nothing like a companion to the bracelet or anything? There was nothing at all?” Buffy’s hand slipped as she turned a page, giving herself a paper cut. She looked at it, and the tiny drop of blood that formed.
“Well.” Maybe it was time to come clean. Not that she had anything to hide.
“What, Buffy?”
“There was.” She licked the blood off her finger, and pressed the cut, nervously. “There was, um, the amulet. Y’know, Spike’s.”
The laptop made a beeping noise. She looked over, but Andrew had his face hidden. She looked back to Dawn, whose eyes were wide with comprehension.
“Oh,” she said.
There was silence, and Dawn continued to look at her. There was something in her widened eyes, and Buffy couldn’t take it. Putting her book down, she left the room and headed to her own.
She squinted at the horizon, and the sun that reflected from the mountains. No matter how far she ran, they never appeared to be any closer. That didn’t matter though, since she had no idea what she would do if she reached them.
She made herself run faster, ignoring the searing pain in the soles of her feet. The rhythm she made sounded ominous to her ears.
Grains of dirt flew into her eye, and she slowed, blinking. As her eyes closed, the beating of her heart morphed to the sound of drums. The heat from the sun vanished, and the replacement sensation made her skin crawl. The smell of blood rose in her nostrils.
Loneliness began to bear down on her, and she forced her eyes open, concentrating on the warmth the sun gave her skin.
Choking back a sob, she ran on, too afraid to look back.
She was woken by Dawn, who sat on the edge of her bed. Scrubbing congealed make-up from her eyes, Buffy realised there was something in her sister’s hands:
“It’s a decaf-soy-mocha. Thought you might like it.” Buffy didn’t reply, but took the cup, marvelling at the Starbucks label.
As she sipped, she asked, “So, um, have you guys figured anything out?”
“A bit.” Dawn shrugged. “None of it makes much sense, but then its all been translated from tons of different languages, so it was never gonna agree completely.”
“Anything, y’know, more concrete than the rest?”
“Well, the bracelet, and the, um, amulet were forged by these two ‘twins’, apparently. I’m not sure if they’re, like, actual twins, but it’s something like that. Anyway, the ‘twins’ were orphans, or didn’t have a family, or something, and they forged the two pieces, basically doing a Sauron. Only, y’know, less with the hate and more with the power.”
“Huh?”
Dawn shook her head. “Sorry. They, like, put their essences into it and stuff. Made the two pieces bound to them and bound to each other: it was a whole power-essence-sharing thing.” Buffy was almost certain that that didn’t make any more sense.
“So, um, what does that mean for us, exactly?”
Dawn frowned, “I’m not sure. We’ve found pretty much everything we can from books and the Internet and stuff. Pretty much all that’s left is to, um,” she turned pink, “go to where it was found….”
“You want us to go to Africa?” Buffy was a little shocked. But then again, what else did she have to do? She didn’t have a job, and Dawn wasn’t in school. (Buffy always meant to get round to that….)
“Well, y’know, it’s a possibility.” Dawn seemed to be warming up to the idea. “It would be really cool, seeing the actual dig and stuff. And there’s always the added bonus of winter sun!” Buffy just looked at her, causing her smile to fade. “Anyway, before that, there’s some other stuff that we need to talk about, stuff that’s come up.” She suddenly looked very uncomfortable. “You’re gonna have to tell me about the, um, the amulet. There’s some stuff…. I need to know what, um, Angel told you, ‘cause there’s something…. It’s just….”
Dawn stopped then, looking at her. The look that had been on her face earlier was back. “Get some more sleep, and then we can go out for dinner or something.” She smiled weakly. “Gotta spend Giles’ money somehow, right?”
Buffy put the empty cup on the side-table. Dawn began to leave, and she called after her:
“Thanks, Dawn. Y’know, for the coffee and stuff.” Dawn smiled again, and left the room.
The plain stretched out in front of her. In the moonlight it was grey, at contrast to the night sky, and patches of white shone where the light hit sand. There were mountains in the distance, she knew, and they were her destination. She had plenty of time to reach them.
A scorpion scuttled by her feet, and she kicked it, watching its path in cruel fascination.
The first rays of dawn glinted off its shell.
As the sunlight touched her skin, she felt something. Involuntarily, she checked whether the scorpion was alive. It was, and she felt relieved.
Disgusted with herself, she searched for some shade. There was little to be found, but a tree offered some cover. She lay down to sleep.
Before her eyes closed, she marvelled at the beauty of the morning sky.
Buffy wondered what it was that Dawn had to tell her. First of all, she’d been plied with evil-corporation-coffee, and now she was eating in an Italian restaurant that had run out of anchovies, without Dawn complaining. It was quite a nice restaurant, actually, even if it was (from what Buffy could tell) just one step up from Pizza Hut. It had a relaxed atmosphere, which she was glad of, since she had been in no mood to dress up.
She was still tired though, and the food wasn’t helping. She had a feeling that she was going to fall asleep at the table, face landing in the remains of her cheesecake and arm knocking over the vase, spilling water everywhere. Even if she did, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t get any actual sleep. It would be stolen by another dream, who knew what about…?
A shriek from a party of pre-teens put her back on alert. Dawn and Andrew were looking serious, sitting together on the other side of the table. Scraping crumbs off her plate, she asked:
“So, um, what did you guys wanna know?” They looked at each other, and Dawn fiddled with her hands. It was Andrew who spoke.
“We were just wondering what Angel actually said to you, about the amulet, when he gave it to you.” She cast her mind back, trying to remember his brief appearance. She remembered kissing him, though not the reason why. And what had he said, exactly?
“He said that it had to be worn by a vampire with a soul. No, wait, other than human.” She kept her voice as neutral as she could. “And there was something about cleaning…cleansing. Other than that, not much. But there was a whole file of papers.”
Dawn shook her head, “The papers didn’t say anything about the amulet. No one knew anything about it, until you,” she closed her eyes briefly, “until you explained what happened.”
“But…he’d done research. There was translation and stuff.”
“None of it was in the file.” Dawn looked at her seriously. “Buffy. The amulet’s pretty well documented. There’s no actual pictures of it or anything, but it’s pretty clear what’s being talked about, when you get round a couple of things. It’s never mentioned on its own, though, it’s always mentioned with the gauntlet. And, Buffy, one thing that’s said is how you’re s’posed to use them.”
“And?” Buffy had a sinking feeling, and was pretty sure she’d lost all neutrality.
“The amulet, it was never meant to be used on its own. Pretty much all the books say that if it is, either it or the gauntlet, weird stuff happens. Stuff that was never meant to. The two things are a matched pair, and if you use them separately then all the power in them’s unbalanced. It.” Dawn swallowed. “It backfires on the user.”
For a moment, Buffy couldn’t speak.
“Angel couldn’t…he didn’t know.”
“If he did research,” Andrew said quietly, “then he knew.”
“No.” She shook her head. “He couldn’t have. He…he wanted to use it himself. He wouldn’t have wanted to use it if he knew.”
“But, you told him he wasn’t. Going to,” Dawn replied.
“But he didn’t know that I was gonna do that.”
“But he knows you. He would’ve known it ‘wasn’t his fight’.”
“But….”
“Buffy, anyone would’ve known.” Dawn was getting exasperated. “First of all, he hadn’t fought with you in about four years, and second, both of you are all sickening and ‘oh no, I can’t risk you’, which means you probably aren’t gonna fight with each other in a very long time.”
“But he couldn’t have known that there was someone else applicable. He couldn’t have known about…Spike until he got to Sunnydale.”
“He knew about the First, though.” Andrew wasn’t looking at her. “If he knew about that, he could have known about a lot of things.”
“No,” Buffy said, putting her fork down with a little more force than she intended. “I know you don’t like Angel, Dawn, and I know that you’ve told Andrew your opinion of him, but he wouldn’t do that. Even if he didn’t actually want to be in the fight, he wouldn’t…kill…Spike that way. He would do it himself.” She looked down at her hands, blinking her eyes into submission.
During the silence, a waitress appeared, clearing their plates and placing the check on the table. Buffy got out her ‘expenses’ credit card, while Dawn spoke again:
“Maybe. But he still left out a load of information. And he’s still working for Wolfram and Hart.”
“I’m not getting into this with you again, Dawn.” She tried to shoot a warning look at her sister, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. “Look, maybe there’s two amulets, and everything’s just a misunderstanding.” It was grasping at straws, but it made more sense.
“Where’s the other one, then?”
“I dunno…still in Africa, near where the bracelet -”
“Gauntlet.”
“Gauntlet was found.”
“Don’t you think they would’ve found it?”
“They might not have.”
“It’s still a bit unlikely…” Andrew started.
“OK!” She was getting angry again. “ We’ll go find it. And then you can stop going at Angel all the time!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
They hastily left the restaurant.
Walking home, Buffy headed out in front, ignoring Dawn and Andrew and their whispered conversation. She climbed the stairs to their flat quickly, and headed straight to bed, her fatigue having come back with full force.
She crouched amongst the brush, trying to keep her footing on the sandy soil. The sun was setting behind her.
The slightest rustle alerted her to their presence. They came closer, and there was nothing she could do but face them. Fluidly, she rose to her feet…
…and came face to face with herself.
Protect me from what I want.
Protect me.
Protect me.
-Placebo, Protect Me from What I Want
[Chapter 4]